Thursday, December 26, 2013

The USA's religious landscape

From even the
briefest overview of almost any selection of news media, television
programs, books, films, or other cultural output, you quickly notice
that the USA appears to be much more religious than either the UK or the
average EU state.

But is it religious in the way we often imagine? The Washington Post
recently published six maps based on the 2010 US Religion Census:
Religious Congregations & Membership Study (RCMS). The results turn
up some unexpected details.1. You can't put a Mormon downDespite being a relatively small religion in terms of its dominance
of counties, being the largest single religion in only 115 out of the
total 3,144 counties in the US, there isn't another group that seems to
be quite as active.Maps displaying the number of congregations per 10,000 people put
Utah and other Mormon areas surrounding it in a fairly middle of the
road shade of brown.But maps displaying religious participation levels, determined by
number of adherents divided by total population, put the homeland of the
Church of Latter Day Saints deep into passionately devoted red.

This confirms what some recent studies have suggested, that Mormonism is the fastest growing single religion in the USA.

2. The Bible Belt has belted upAlthough the South East of the USA might be what everyone thinks of
as the Christian spiritual heartland of America, the statistics paint a
somewhat different picture.

While states like Arkansas, Louisiana,
Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Missouri are still
definitely dominated by the Southern Baptist Convention, they are
recording lower levels of participation than among Mormons.

The map showing adherents divided by population might show occasional
flakes of dark red in the Bible belt, but the brightest burning heat
outside of Utah is to be found in a band stretching from western Texas,
through western Oklahoma, up through Nebraska, Iowa, south Western
Minnesota and the Dakotas.It's also interesting to note that many, but not all, of these
regions correlate with areas in the top 40-60% and 60-80% percentiles
for religious diversity.In June 2013 the Nashville City Paper reported that the Southern
Baptist Convention had experienced decline for the sixth straight year
in a row.

Although they dominate the traditional Bible Belt region in
terms of adherents, the stats suggest the denomination faces challenges
in activating its membership.

Islam is the largest non-Christian religion in 22 out of the 50 US
states. Notably, many of these states are also ones held strongly by the
Southern Baptist Convention.

An arc of states with a significant Muslim
population sweeps round from Texas, through Florida, avoiding South
Carolina (the only state where the Baha'i faith comes 2nd to
Christianity), reaching up to Virginia before turning back west around
the coast of Lake Michigan and ending up as far west as Wyoming.This increasing rise in Christian heartlands might soon perk up the
attention of many Southern Baptists. Currently, the South East is not
marked highly for religious diversity, but if their levels of
participation don't increase, that may soon change.4. Hinduism turns up in the oddest placesWhen it comes to the other non-Christian religions, most is much as
you would expect. Judaism has not strayed far from its American
ancestral heartlands, which is hardly surprising given that relatively
few denominations actively pursue the acquisition of new followers
through evangelism.

Most of New England as well as New York, Minnesota,
Missouri and Tennessee all show Jews to be the largest non-Christian
group there.

Buddhism has spread from its many oddly (some might say
paradoxically) wealthier adherents in California and out into Alaska,
New Mexico, and as far East as Kansas and Oklahoma.

The one common thing about all these groups mentioned so far is that
there is a largely contagious movement.

Although Minnesota is directly
adjacent to no other Jewish dominated state, it is only separated from
two of its fellow brethren by Iowa.

Hinduism however bucks this trend.

The only two states where Hinduism
is the largest non-Christian religion are Delaware and Arizona.Contiguous blocks of states with a single religion make sense. Ideas
often move geographically, just as certain strands of Buddhism,
Zoroastrianism, Islam, and Christianity moved along the silk road of
central Asia in the dark ages and medieval period.Yet in an age of mass air travel, where you can span the planet in a
matter of hours rather than days, all that is thrown out the window.

This is especially true for religions that don't believe in what we in
the west would consider conventional ideas of evangelism, transmission
is often achieved by other means, in the case of Hinduism producing some
unexpected results.5. Catholics love the melting pot, but don't want to stir too muchDespite America's historical mythos of the heroic British Puritans
desperately fleeing the oppression of the quasi-Catholic Anglican
Church, Catholics are fairly ubiquitous in America.

From the upper North
East of Maine, to the depths of South Western California, Catholicism
is the largest single denomination in counties all across the US.

And
where it seen, three other things are noted: a low level of religious
participation, with smaller percentages of the total population of a
given county identifying as religious, smaller numbers of congregations
overall, and higher levels of religious diversity.This is most pronounced in the western states, with places like
Oregon, Washington State, California, western Montana and eastern
Wyoming all coming in as very Catholic dominated, with pale beige when
it comes to congregation numbers, and hazy pink in participation scores.

Catholics it seems are very much a part of the US, but they apparently
like to keep quiet about it.